By Jennie A. Camp, Special To The News
June 20, 2003

Alice Thrift has been a social misfit all her life. Her co-workers think she's odd, her few friends want to give her a personality makeover, and her mother is convinced Alice has Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism whose sufferers have sky-high IQs but very poor social skills.

Alice is a Harvard-educated first-year surgery resident at a Boston hospital who is impressively self-aware, despite her remiss bedside manner. She has to remind herself daily not to march in on a cancer patient, for example, announcing dire test results and suggesting said patient get his personal effects in order. The subtle timing and grace of social relations are what elude Alice, although she is more than willing to accept lessons from those who want to teach her.

Her teachers are as motley a group as Alice herself is socially dull:

• Alice's mother, Joyce Thrift, is a well-to-do socialite who comes to Alice longing for the same fiercely intimate mother-daughter connection she shared with her own newly deceased mother;

• Leo Frawley, a nurse who shares an apartment with Alice, is gregarious and tries to draw Alice out of her shyness;

• Dr. Henry Shaw, a near-retirement obstetrician, befriends Alice one lonely Sunday night in the hospital cafeteria and becomes a kind of father-figure;

• Sylvie Schwartz, a third-year medical resident who lives across the hall, is a bold and promiscuous confidante who pushes Alice to stand up for herself;

• Ray Russo, a traveling fudge salesman, is Alice's unlikely eventual husband who draws her out into the world with a self-deprecating jocularity that helps Alice learn to have confidence in her own intelligence and occasional wit.

With such fascinating characters and a compelling look at social acceptability, Elinor Lipman's new novel The Pursuit of Alice Thrift is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Unlike poor Alice's timing and humor, Lipman's narrative on both counts is commendable. And although the novel's ending is somewhat of a disappointment, overall The Pursuit of Alice Thrift is both amusing and insightful.

When Alice first meets Dr. Henry Shaw in the hospital cafeteria, for example, we catch an all-too-common glimpse of Alice's poor social graces when she speaks without thinking. As usual, the coldness of her words initially elicits only surprised silence:

"'I've always found it a little peculiar when men choose OB,'" Alice tells Dr. Shaw, a longtime obstetrician who has just told Alice his area of specialty. "'Of course I was delivered by a male obstetrician, but now, today, it seems odd that a man would devote himself to anatomical parts he didn't possess without any hope of ever experiencing any of the sensations associated with them.'"

The novel opens when Ray, the fudge salesman, consults Alice about a nose job he is considering, and Alice manages to talk him out of it. Although Alice hardly notices Ray, Ray pursues Alice with great determination until their eventual but sudden Cape Code nuptials.

While the novel primarily is a story of Ray and Alice's seemingly doomed romance, both Alice's career and her various friendships grow and change as well. By the end, Alice's weakness has blossomed into a brand of shyness that may not land her the position of chief resident but that certainly bears no resemblance to autism.

Unfortunately, the novel takes us exactly where we expect and hope it won't: to a glimpse of Ray that is both disheartening and somehow much too easy. We suspect Ray's shallowness from page one, and when we learn in the end that our suspicions are true, the closing pages bring a too-comfortable end to Alice's story, rather than allowing us something that can resonate both forward and backward, granting the novel greater thematic depth and meaning.

Lipman is the author of six previous novels, including Isabel's Bed and The Inn at Lake Devine. In The Pursuit of Alice Thrift, she makes the bold pronouncement that the lines of social class are indelible; yet the darkness of her statement is couched by humor and the twists of a pleasingly fast-moving plot.

Jennie A. Camp's reviews and short stories have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review and other publications. She lives in Platteville.